---
title: "Telling porkies" is British slang for telling lies, from the rhymin… — Soft words for hard things: crime, prison and th… · tree and pragmatics
description: "Telling porkies" is British slang for telling lies, from the rhyming slang "porky pies" for lies. Who acts: Telling. A sentence of the lesson «Soft words for hard things: crime, prison and the police and lying and honesty» of the euphemisms course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree a
---

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# Soft words for hard things: crime, prison and the police and lying and honesty, sentence 20

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"Telling porkies" is British slang for telling lies, from the rhyming slang "porky pies" for lies.

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**Who acts:** Telling · **What happens:** tell, be · **To what, where:** porkies, British slang · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Soft words for hard things: crime, prison and the police and lying and honesty» of the euphemisms course of Mova's primary school. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Telling), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:euphemisms:028-stealing-and-lying.lesson:20
# text = "Telling porkies" is British slang for telling lies, from the rhyming slang "porky pies" for lies.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = euphemisms
# lesson = 028-stealing-and-lying.lesson
# annotation = Mova annot: Rust (en) → Haiku 5.5 (medium, Batches API) patches; gates UD 2.18; agreed by treeagree rules (Stanza, Trankit, spaCy trf): R6-punct-agree ×2, R7-rel-agree ×2
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	2	punct	_	_
2	Telling	tell	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	7	csubj	_	_
3	porkies	porky	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	2	obj	_	_
4	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	_
5	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	7	cop	_	_
6	British	British	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	amod	_	_
7	slang	slang	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
8	for	for	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
9	telling	tell	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	10	amod	_	_
10	lies	lie	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	7	nmod	_	_
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	15	punct	_	_
12	from	from	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
13	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
14	rhyming	rhyme	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	compound	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=15:amod|HaikuPos=VERB:VBG:VerbForm=Ger
15	slang	slang	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	18	compound	_	_
16	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	18	punct	_	Agree=R6-punct-agree|Haiku=15:punct|HaikuPos=PUNCT:'':_
17	porky	porky	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	18	compound	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=18:amod|HaikuPos=ADJ:JJ:Degree=Pos
18	pies	pie	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	7	appos	_	_
19	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	18	punct	_	_
20	for	for	ADP	IN	_	21	case	_	_
21	lies	lie	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	18	nmod	_	_
22	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	Agree=R6-punct-agree|Haiku=18:punct
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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No stored speech act for this sentence.

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **tell** *speech: assert* *in a quote* | gerund |  | porkies |  |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent porky=Recipient |
| 2 | **is a** | present | Telling | British slang |  |  |  | for telling lies | tree rules |
| 3 | **tell** *speech: assert* | gerund |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |

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One row per clause the reader finds. «not said here»: a role filled from the clause above. «roles by»: a VerbNet class and frame when one fits the verb, else the reader's rules on the tree.

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**Licence: [CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)**, as the whole of Mova corpus 0.4, of which this treebank (the agreed school, `mova-school-agreed-en.conllu`) is part. The lessons were written for Mova's primary school. Sentence `school:euphemisms:028-stealing-and-lying.lesson:20`.

**The tree:** Mova annot: Rust (en) → Haiku 5.5 (medium, Batches API) patches; gates UD 2.18; agreed by treeagree rules (Stanza, Trankit, spaCy trf): R6-punct-agree ×2, R7-rel-agree ×2. **The frames** are read from the tree by Mova's frames reader (`prag`) when this page is built, the lesson read in order, so a pronoun may be resolved from an earlier sentence.

See the [release 0.4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/releases/0.4/).

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